A PATH THAT WILL BE FREQUENTLY TRAVELED

Creek Path Opening and Interpretive Walk

What: The city of Escondido and Reveal Escondido Creek coalition are hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Ash Street bicycle and pedestrian path undercrossing along Escondido Creek. Volunteers then will lead a short interpretive walk along the creek trail.

ESCONDIDO 
The vision to transform Escondido Creek from an often blighted flood-control channel into a recreational asset continues to make progress.

The latest improvement to the bicycle and pedestrian path along the creek opens Saturday. An undercrossing was constructed beneath Ash Street, giving bicyclists and pedestrians safer passage across a busy portion of the street between Valley Parkway and Washington Avenue.

Construction on the $2 million project, funded by a San Diego Association of Governments grant, began in September.

“It’s significantly safer,” said Councilman Michael Morasco, a frequent cyclist around the city. “That was a very problematic crossing.”

Although the undercrossing is not officially part of the Escondido Creek Trail Master Plan that the City Council approved unanimously earlier this year, it is considered a crucial part of path’s transformation.

Community Development Director Barbara Redlitz said the bike path, particularly the stretch at Ash Street, has been a focus of city planners for years. Until now, bicyclists were directed by signs to walk a half-block to a signaled intersection to cross busy Ash Street and then return to the creek path.

“The (bike path) along the creek has been really important because of the east-west connectivity it provides,” Redlitz said. “This was a missing link.”

The creek cuts through seven miles of the city as a concrete-lined channel that is frequently marred by graffiti, bordered by unsightly chain-link fencing and prone to crime.

About three years ago, Councilwoman Olga Diaz raised the idea of transforming the creek and its path into a riverwalk, with similar riverwalks in San Luis Obispo and San Antonio in mind. A team of graduate students from Cal Poly Pomona created a vision plan, which was greeted with overwhelming support and praise in summer 2010. Reveal Escondido Creek, a coalition of volunteers and organizations working to transform the creek into a recreation and transit corridor, emerged from that vision and continues to grow.

To build upon the students’ work, the city last year pursued a $75,000 Healthy Communities grant from SANDAG and commissioned a master plan for the creek from San Diego landscape architecture firm Schmidt Design Group.

Glen Schmidt, whose group conducted two community workshops and an online survey to gather comments for the master plan, told City Council members in January that their vision for the creek would make the city “very livable, very walkable, very bicycle-friendly.” Schmidt’s work centered on a roughly five-mile stretch, from the Escondido Transit Center to the east end of the city.

The 80-plus-page master plan is a set of design guidelines for development along the creek and enables the city to pursue grant funding for proposed amenities such as a skate plaza, fitness loop, lighting, benches, art, interpretive signs, and landscaping.

“It’s really kind of a noble, heartwarming project,” Diaz said before the council’s approval. “This is one (city project) that makes me very proud because we’re taking a city property that’s an eyesore and eventually converting it to something that we can be as proud of as some of our jewel parks.”

Katie Ragazzi, a member of Reveal Escondido Creek and one of the vision’s earliest supporters, praised the city’s support and strategic approach. The creek is “a blank slate. It’s a really exciting time for the project.”

The coalition, which organized a creek cleanup last weekend, now is working on drawing more volunteers to the coalition, Ragazzi said.

“Our purpose is going out to (community) groups to make a connection,” she said, adding that the more people are aware of the creek path, the more it will be used, and the safer it will become.

“Because some unsafe activities have taken place there … you have a cycle, people don’t go there,” Ragazzi said. “You replace the undesirable activities with healthy, wholesome ones.”